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To the original poster, from Arms if the Chosen, they have a couple of repeats for origin eras: war if the gods, dreams of the first age, gossamer dawn epoch, and falling star interregnum for 3 or more.

The timeline i like being in ST hands when possible, roughly it should go:
Time of Primordials, War of the Gods, Solar awesomeness/expansion, Solar Corruption, The Usurpation, The Shogunate, The Plague/Invasion, Reign of the Scarlet Empress, Time of Tumult.

But they listed like 30 time frames, which gives lots more options (maybe each one is a Lore specialty?) I love that a ton of them (many moonsilver & jade ones) sound like the post Usurpation times, long stretches of time (low first age or second age, both fine with me) where their stories are what matters.

Another option this naming scheme gives is that if these are named in universe, lunar and shogunate eras happen at overlapping times under different names, same thing for sidereal artifacts or certain first age ones. Who can say the five devils war was before the truce of ivy or after, or anywhere near each other in time? Use it to make more doubt, as 5000 years old vs 6000 years old has little actual weight, but knowing the sword slew a legion of traitorous Dragon bloods versus stabbed another Solar in the back does.

Don't lock down stuff unless you are using it is really my stance. I do want to try more than one prior incarnation per PC after this though to give more variety when flashbacks occur (i like that part for solars a lot)

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Before the Divine Revolution: Who knows?
The Divine Revolution: Who knows?
The First Age: ~5000 years.
The Shogunate: In First Edition, I believe this was ~607 years. I don't think we're likely to change that.
Years Since the Rise of the Empress: 768 years.

Okay, I flubbed my calculations with the Shogunate calendar. According to Lea, it comes out to 493 years for the Shogunate.

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old timeline with First Age ending with Great Contagion and Balorian Crusade

You know, I went back to check on the First Edition core, and was surprised to find that it presented the difference of opinion as one that actually existed in character; that regular people regarded the Great Contagion as the end of the First Age, while educated people held that point as being the downfall of the Solars.

​I would speculate that part of the reason for such a dispute within the fiction was to convey an idea of "Ages" as not being hard, ontological things, and that the history of the setting is subject to incomplete and differing standards of categorization. If so, I can understand the motive to do so.

​But at the same time, I see a practical issue with it as regards consistency in later writing, and clarity on what any given instance of "the First Age" is referring to.

​Still, that's only an argument for one standard, not which standard is preferable.

​I think more of the downfall of the Solars being the demarcation point, mostly because of the image conveyed around the Shogunate as a complete reorganization and raising something atop ashes. If the image had ever taken the form of the Dragon Blooded taking over the Realm which continued to exist as usual, I could get more into the idea that it was within the same Age; but when it has turns as dramatic as the Solars disappearing, the Sidereals withdrawing into the shadows, and the Lunars being driven into an exile from which they periodically violently retaliate, as well as how the Dragon Blooded kind of rebuilt society from the ground up and that the overall quality of magic took a turn down, that feels like a shift that is too drastic to still be regarded as within the same Age.

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FWIW, I went and made some calculations about how long the Shogunate lasted based on Lookshy's (needlessly complicated) calendar found in the 1st Ed book Exalted: the Outcaste. (Lookshy's calendar, according to E:tO, is the same calendar the Shogunate used.) Since the general consensus back in 1st Edition was that the Usurpation happened 1,500 years before Realm Year 768, I calculated the Usurpation occurred in the year BR 732 (i.e. "Before Realm") according to the Scarlet Realm's calendar.

So I went through the calculations with Lookshy's calendar to see if it matched up with 1,500 years. But with only 11 epochs having occurred according to E:tO, then the entire Shogunate calendar from the Usurpation to the present day of RY 768 only lasted 1,261 years. That still left a disparity of 239 years between the Usurpation and the establishment of the Shogunate, which made no sense to me because it wouldn't have taken the Sidereals and the Dragon-Blooded almost 2 and a half centuries to create a functional government, especially when they spent so long preparing for the Usurpation itself. (Don't try to tell me that the Siderals would have overlooked the necessity of establishing at least a provisional government after the Solars were gone.) But simply by changing the number of epochs from 11 (E:to's official count) to 13 (my own calculation), then the age of the Shogunate lasted not 493 years, but 714 years. Assuming that the Usurpation was 1,500 years prior to RY 768, then 732 years passed from the Usurpation to the Great Contagion. There's only a difference of 18 years between 732 and 714, so that's a far more reasonable margin for the Shogunate to have been established after the Usurpation when you take into account that the Dragon-Blooded still had to establish the Wyld Hunt and go to war with the Solars who survived (or weren't present at) the Feast of 300 Knives at the start of the Usurpation.

Given the changes to the progression of elemental seasons in 3e, is the order of elemental eras used in the Shogunate calendar likely to change, or is that something that's not a particularly high priority?

Oh gawds, I didn't even think of this. Yeah with the change of the elemental progression in the 3E calendar, the old E:tO Shogunate calendar became even more obsolete. Ugh.

Comment

Wait, did you actually figure out how far back the calendar went by matching the years up one at a time?

Anyway, the 1500 year figure is probably approximate, just like how I've often seen sources round up the length of time that the Realm has existed to 800 years. I can only assume that when it came to writing The Outcaste, between what I can discern of the general sensibilities of Scott Taylor (who I'm about 80% sure was the primary writer of Lookshy material), and what I'm quite certain were the sensibilities of book developer Geoff Grabowski, there was an eye to specifically writing against the number of years since the Usurpation being a conveniently round figure.

Honestly, writing out the current Shogunate year, including the procedure for decoding it, and having it come out to such a precise and messy figure seems like mostly a cute Easter Egg in combination with the aforementioned principle. It strikes me as kind of silly to presume that there's an underlying coded message that the Shogunate calendar doesn't start until centuries after the Usurpation, or that the calendar is written in error, because... why the attachment to the specific 1500 year figure?

That and I've found Lea's past arguments to the effect of the Shogunate subverting the expectation that each historical period is shorter than the last compelling, as well as how it complemented the idea of the Shogunate having been rather unstable.

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I kind of presumed the calendar has a gap because:
1) There might have been a second Shogunate or even Shogunate dynasty (think like, Ashikaga to Tokugawa Shogunate transition).
2) There was no single shogun when the Usurpation happened, things went into civil war pretty quick, and the one who took the final mantle was the first Shogun, which wasn't until a couple centuries past the Usurpation itself.
3) The calendar went through reform, and they just reset the date arbitrarily to the start that Lookshy uses. Some major event, such as the rise of a notable shogun or their dynasty marked it's start.

It could have even been a mix of any of these. I generally just assumed the gap was because military coups are messy and so the results might be weird calendar events.

Comment

Wait, did you actually figure out how far back the calendar went by matching the years up one at a time?

Actually yes, I pretty much had to because the Shogunate Calendar is so ridiculously complicated because it's subdivided into no less than three subsections, namely epochs, eras and cycles. It was the only way I could make absolutely certain that my calculations were correct. Thank the gawds for the cut-and-paste function in Microsoft Word.

Anyway, the 1500 year figure is probably approximate, just like how I've often seen sources round up the length of time that the Realm has existed to 800 years. I can only assume that when it came to writing The Outcaste, between what I can discern of the general sensibilities of Scott Taylor (who I'm about 80% sure was the primary writer of Lookshy material), and what I'm quite certain were the sensibilities of book developer Geoff Grabowski, there was an eye to specifically writing against the number of years since the Usurpation being a conveniently round figure.

Honestly, writing out the current Shogunate year, including the procedure for decoding it, and having it come out to such a precise and messy figure seems like mostly a cute Easter Egg in combination with the aforementioned principle. It strikes me as kind of silly to presume that there's an underlying coded message that the Shogunate calendar doesn't start until centuries after the Usurpation, or that the calendar is written in error, because... why the attachment to the specific 1500 year figure?

As to the 1,500 year figure, I didn't expect it to be completely accurate, but at the very least I expected it to be a significant ballpark figure to be accurate to within a century or so at the very least. If we're casually talking about distant past events, using multiples of 100 years/one century seems like a convenient enough shorthand. Since the most relatively accurate sources I saw in 1st and 2nd Ed kept saying the Usurpation was "1,500 years ago" versus "1,200 years ago" or "1,300 years ago", that was a sufficient ballpark figure. So adding 2 more epochs in the Shogunate Calendar to shrink the margin between the Usurpation to the beginning of the Shogunate calendar from 293 years to only 18 years gave me a far more reasonable approximate figure (to my mind, anyway). An approximate figure that's off by almost three centuries makes no sense because that's like saying a major global event like, say, the American Revolutionary War happened in the 15th (or 21st) Century or that World War II happened in the 17th (or 23rd) Century. Getting to an 18 year margin, as you say, fulfills both the getting-reasonably-close-to-1,500-years goal as well as the not-exactly-calculated-to-be-1,500-years goal.

That and I've found Lea's past arguments to the effect of the Shogunate subverting the expectation that each historical period is shorter than the last compelling, as well as how it complemented the idea of the Shogunate having been rather unstable.

Yeah, my calendar fulfills that function because, according to my calculations, the Shogunate lasted 714 (give or take) years while the Scarlet Realm lasted 768 (and counting). I still have to reread those snippets in the old Castebooks and Aspectbooks to get a feel for how the Shogunate felt and functioned, but yeah, as you say (and I vaguely remember just reading something in E3 that mentioned this), the Shogunate was notoriously unstable, especially when compared to Her Redness' government, because it seemed the Shogunate had a new military coup every other decade or so. One wonders what made the Sidereals think that this was a "stable" state of affairs that didn't warrant a new form of government....

Then again, in contrast to the horrors the Solars became at the end of the First Age, the Shogunate, even as unstable as it was, probably seemed like a paradise in comparison. That says a lot about the old Solars.

I kind of presumed the calendar has a gap because:
1) There might have been a second Shogunate or even Shogunate dynasty (think like, Ashikaga to Tokugawa Shogunate transition).
2) There was no single shogun when the Usurpation happened, things went into civil war pretty quick, and the one who took the final mantle was the first Shogun, which wasn't until a couple centuries past the Usurpation itself.
3) The calendar went through reform, and they just reset the date arbitrarily to the start that Lookshy uses. Some major event, such as the rise of a notable shogun or their dynasty marked it's start.

It could have even been a mix of any of these. I generally just assumed the gap was because military coups are messy and so the results might be weird calendar events.

As I was making my first calculations and found the 293 years gap, the idea of a Dragon-blooded civil war preventing the establishment of a new calendar occurred to me as well, but then I discarded it. Even after the Usurpation, the Dragon-Blooded would still need to set dates for future battle plans, especially since a few surviving Solars were making guerilla war on the Shogunate. (That was the whole reason for the mission creep of the Wyld Hunt from guarding against the raksha to pursuing the Solars who survived the Usurpation.) Why set an arbitrary date for a new calendar almost 300 years after the fact, especially when establishing a new calendar right after your coup against the Solars lends you more legitimacy right away?

Furthermore, (and this is just my opinion) I can't see the early Shogunate going into civil war with each other while the Solars were still a threat. To my mind, the Shogunate wouldn't have descended into civil war until the Wyld Hunt was fully retasked against the Solar survivors of the Feast of 300 Knives. Otherwise, the Solars would have exploited the divisions among the Dragon-Blooded and overthrown the early Shogunate through Divide And Conquer.

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I mean, a big thing to remember, especailly in 3e, is that there's probably not one big ol' "This is the calendar everyone in the world uses" in the First Age. The timeline in Arms of the Chosen shows a lot of overlapping periods, events, and governments throughotu Creation. For all we know the date chosen is as arbitrary as any other. Another one that might be a neat one is some shogun thought it was a good time o reset when like, the last Solar Rajate off in the periphery of the Shogunate was finally subjugated or something.

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Actually yes, I pretty much had to because the Shogunate Calendar is so ridiculously complicated because it's subdivided into no less than three subsections, namely epochs, eras and cycles.

The cycles don't really matter to the calculation.

An epoch is said to consist of five units of 25, hence 125 years. We're told that the current Shogunate year is the year of the Mouse in the Bronze Era (said to be the first of each epoch) of the 11th Epoch, so we know that's 10 x 125 = 1250 plus however many years it takes to reach Mouse, which the chart right there lists as the eleventh. Hence, 1250 + 11 = 1261.

Originally posted by Su-tehp

As to the 1,500 year figure, I didn't expect it to be completely accurate, but at the very least I expected it to be a significant ballpark figure to be accurate to within a century or so at the very least. If we're casually talking about distant past events, using multiples of 100 years/one century seems like a convenient enough shorthand. Since the most relatively accurate sources I saw in 1st and 2nd Ed kept saying the Usurpation was "1,500 years ago" versus "1,200 years ago" or "1,300 years ago", that was a sufficient ballpark figure. So adding 2 more epochs in the Shogunate Calendar to shrink the margin between the Usurpation to the beginning of the Shogunate calendar from 293 years to only 18 years gave me a far more reasonable approximate figure (to my mind, anyway). An approximate figure that's off by almost three centuries makes no sense because that's like saying a major global event like, say, the American Revolutionary War happened in the 15th (or 21st) Century or that World War II happened in the 17th (or 23rd) Century. Getting to an 18 year margin, as you say, fulfills both the getting-reasonably-close-to-1,500-years goal as well as the not-exactly-calculated-to-be-1,500-years goal.

The calendar in The Outcaste definitely represents a departure from previous statements. It's a departure that I think is interesting in its own right, and given the fact that the book was developed by the guy who basically invented Exalted, one that I think may represent a strong authorial intent as to how long the Shogunate lasted.

I think the idea doesn't have as much punch if the difference between the length of the two eras is the measure of a split hair.

Originally posted by Su-tehp

One wonders what made the Sidereals think that this was a "stable" state of affairs that didn't warrant a new form of government....

Then again, in contrast to the horrors the Solars became at the end of the First Age, the Shogunate, even as unstable as it was, probably seemed like a paradise in comparison. That says a lot about the old Solars.

Or the Shogunate could be considered to be kind of a failure in execution.

I think the worst excesses of the Solars have often been written as something that was on the verge of happening, rather than ongoing.

Comment

As a note, as complicated as the Shogunate calendar seems, it seems about par for the course for some real world calendars. The Chinese Zodiac included animal labels down to month and hour, has an Wu-Xing elemental cycle element, and also does yin/yang years too. The Mayans had some pretty damned complex ones, with the Long Count actually having (to me at least) a bit of a resemblance to the Shogunate calendar.

So while it's screwy since it's odd for us modern Western folk, i'ts kind of worht remembeirng calendars were a lot less "codified" than they were throughout various parts of human history.

Comment

I mean, a big thing to remember, especially in 3e, is that there's probably not one big ol' "This is the calendar everyone in the world uses" in the First Age. The timeline in Arms of the Chosen shows a lot of overlapping periods, events, and governments throughout Creation. For all we know the date chosen is as arbitrary as any other. Another one that might be a neat one is some shogun thought it was a good time to reset when like, the last Solar Rajate off in the periphery of the Shogunate was finally subjugated or something.

Indeed, this is just as plausible as anything else. With the advent of 3E reworking so many things about Exalted, all the old stuff has been thrown into flux. Especially an obscure 1st Ed calendar that only got mentioned in one old supplement book and was never heard about or mentioned again. Which makes my calculation notes obsolete and academic. Ah, well.

As a note, as complicated as the Shogunate calendar seems, it seems about par for the course for some real world calendars. The Chinese Zodiac included animal labels down to month and hour, has an Wu-Xing elemental cycle element, and also does yin/yang years too. The Mayans had some pretty damned complex ones, with the Long Count actually having (to me at least) a bit of a resemblance to the Shogunate calendar.

So while it's screwy since it's odd for us modern Western folk, it's kind of worth remembering calendars were a lot less "codified" than they were throughout various parts of human history.

Not being familiar with other calendars other than our good ol' Anno Domini/Common Era Gregorian calendar, this is a good point to keep in mind.

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Different 1st ed and 2nd ed sources, stuck together, ended up giving different calculations. You can try and justify it, sure, but at the end of the day I think it's just inconsistent writing.

As the calendar has already been changed significantly in 3rd ed, I hope that, rather than trying to fit old calculations in, Vance and Minton just pick a time they think makes sense and say it's that.